We review the evidence on the impact of public R&D spending. We first look at the evidence from micro-analysis of the impact of public intervention on private R&D and innovation, with a focus on the latest results from crosscountry micro-research performed within SIMPATIC (www.simpatic.eu). To...

The European Union has prioritised the pursuit of innovation-based growth and targeting of resources to promote research and development, but performance on innovation remains weak. With the lack of results comes fatigue, waning interest and mounting criticism about policy. Should the EU abandon...

We review the evidence on the impact of public intervention on private research and innovation, and how research and innovation and R&I policies affect growth in the applied macro models most commonly used in European Union policy analysis. The evidence suggests that R&I grants and R&I tax...

MRNA technology has proved in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic its breakthrough value as a basis for vaccines. There has been rapid development of highly safe, effective and robust mRNA vaccines, and these can be delivered at large scale. Yet the technology is the result of a long process of...

Recent policy initiatives in the EU aim at supporting so-called Young Innovative Companies (YICs). This paper provides empirical evidence from German CIS data on the innovative performances of this specific type of firms, supporting why they matter. We first characterize YICs in the sample of...

Record linkage algorithms typically find matches by comparing records on the fields they share. However, PATSTAT shares very little information with company databases. We introduce REMERGE: a flexible, open-source algorithm that allows PATSTAT, the worldwide patent database, to be intelligently...

Research and development is seen as a key contributor to growth because it generates knowledge, leading to new or improved products through product innovation, and makes firms more efficient at producing goods through process innovation. Firm- level studies generally find evidence of strong...